In a civil lawsuit alleging extortion by his niece and nephew, Bo Jackson was granted $21 million by a court in the Atlanta region last week.
The Bessemer native Jackson, 61, accused his niece and nephew Thomas Lee Anderson and Erica M. Anderson of “relentless harassment and intimidation” in an April complaint.
Jackson played baseball and football at Auburn before rising to prominence as one of the world’s most famous athletes. In addition to the monetary award, a Cobb County judge concluded in favor of Jackson on February 2 and issued a permanent protective order against the Andersons.
A protective order prohibits the Andersons from communicating with Jackson or his immediate family and mandates that they keep a minimum of 500 yards between the Jacksons’ residences, places of employment, and educational institutions. They must also take down any social media posts that mention Bo Jackson and refrain from publishing about him on such platforms.
Jackson received a settlement that included $20 million in punitive damages in addition to little more than $1 million in compensatory damages to cover legal costs.
Cobb County judge Jason Marbutt stated in his decision that the defendants had “acted with malice, wantonness, oppression, with a conscious effort of indifference to circumstances and with the specific intent to cause Plaintiff harm.”
The Andersons, one of whom resides in Cobb County and the other in Texas, allegedly tried to extort $20 million from Jackson in exchange for keeping information private that would have painted him “in a false light” and caused “severe emotional distress,” according to the lawsuit Jackson filed through his Marietta, Georgia, attorneys. Apart from his income from playing professional football and baseball in the 1980s and 1990s, Jackson earned a good living as a paid pitchman for Nike and other brands. He has also run several profitable enterprises throughout the years.
Jackson filed for a stalker protection order against the Andersons after they made threats to call off a charity event in April and shared possibly harmful content on social media. Jackson allegedly feared for his family’s safety as well as his own.
After the Andersons neglected to show up in court on January 31 to challenge a temporary protection order the judge had given in May of last year, Marbutt rendered a default judgment in favor of Jackson. Marbutt decided they had admitted Jackson’s statements as accurate since they hadn’t challenged them in court.
“Unfortunately for those trying to extract $20 million from Jackson and his family, Bo still delivers a stiff blow,” Jackson’s lawyers, Moore Ingram Johnson and Steele, stated in a Feb. 5 statement.
Jackson has successfully sued on previous occasions in response to defamation claims. Jackson filed a defamation lawsuit against the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in 2005 when the sports editor of the newspaper cited a dietitian who said that Jackson’s use of anabolic steroids was to blame for the severe hip injury he sustained in a 1991 NFL playoff game, which ultimately ended his football career. Later on, the newspaper apologized to Jackson in public and withdrew its piece.
Jackson, a running back in the Pro Bowl with the Los Angeles Raiders, the 1985 Heisman Trophy winner at Auburn, and the 1989 MLB All-Star Game Most Valuable Player with the Kansas City Royals, currently resides permanently in the Chicago region. In his own state, he continues to make appearances at a number of events every year, such as Auburn football games, the Region’s Tradition golf tournament in Birmingham in May, and his yearly “Bo Bikes Bama” charity cycling event across east Alabama in the spring.
